Every year, federal and local law enforcement, conduct harmful, dangerous raids on sex workers in advance of the Super Bowl, under the guise of fighting sex trafficking.
But year after year, these Super Bowl raids have failed to identify few, if anyactual trafficking victims. Instead, they disrupt and destroy the lives of sex workers, who are subsequently forced through the criminal justice system for a publicity stunt. A report from the USC Gould School of Law’s International Human Rights Clinic strongly advocates against raids, calling them “ineffective” against trafficking and “traumatizing” to sex workers, predominantly women of color.
Stop the raids hosts symposiums aimed at informing media, the public, and legislators about the ongoing harms of law enforcement raids, in addition to meeting with legislators to inform them on harms of new legislation impacting sex workers in California.
On June 2, 2025, the 50th anniversary of International Whore’s Day in Los Angeles, a group of sex worker-led organizations and our allies occupied a park to create a visual protest using red umbrellas with a strong message. We collaborated with international sex workers all over the world. This action was led by Antonia Crane and it was inspired by the Belgian sex worker union UTSOPI, who continue to push for labor rights and visibility for sex workers around the world.
2025 California state wide sex worker rally & legislative action day
Join advocates from all over California at this years sex worker rally and legislative action day at the state capitol in Sacramento to rally against bad laws introduced to the California legislature.
Stop the Raids Las Vegas Super Bowl LVIII 2025 Coverage
Maxine Doogan, an organizer with the sex worker advocacy group Stop the Raids, said that a central issue in the conversation is the criminalization of prostitution. She said it can take away from actual public safety because resources are being used against consensual, adult sex workers that could be used elsewhere. “[Criminalization] diverts important public resources away from actual public safety, and the public is less safe,” Doogan said. She said anti-prostitution laws should be repealed.
Stop the Raids Las Vegas Super Bowl LVIII 2024 Coverage
“It just leaves a bad taste in your mouth,” said Doogan, who has been a Bay Area sex worker for 35 years and helped organize an anti-raid gathering Monday outside Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. “Our business is part of the larger economy, and it’s just really a discriminatory act to single us out at these large sporting events.”
“Almost half of Americans believe that prostitution, the exchange of sex for payment and a misdemeanor in many states, should be decriminalized. However, few doubt that sex trafficking — defined under federal law as commercial sex involving minors, force, fraud or coercion — is an act of evil.”
“You can’t help but feel bad for the prostitutes that get caught up in these sting operations,” Doogan said. “The Super Bowl is such a unifying event, and they won’t get the chance to take part in it.”
“The laws that criminalize prostitution … end up being the basis that people, mostly women, are discriminated against in housing, access to employment, access to their child custody rights, access to financial institutions,” said 35-year “working prostitute” Maxine Doogan. “So that prostitution arrest can be like a social death.”
“Activists say increased police raids around the Super Bowl only harm and traumatize consensual sex workers without actually helping trafficking survivors”
“Yet, anti-trafficking organizations like Freedom Network USA and Polaris all agree that there is no evidence to suggest that there is a spike in human trafficking around the Super Bowl. Researchers have also found no link. Instead, this messaging is an effective way for some organizations to boost their profiles while also making the police look good and necessary. But it does little to help actual victims or survivors.”
“Cities routinely engage in sweeps of the community, trying to push the poor and impoverished out of view. They want to sweep the extent of poverty and homelessness under the rug. Looking pristine for tourists is more important to Las Vegas officials than helping the most marginalized in our community. As we get closer to the Formula One and the Super Bowl, such activities will only increase, purposefully making the lives of many people worse. These events are opportunities for the city to bring in large amounts of money, and the City of Las Vegas should be allocating some of this revenue to increasing social safety nets.”
Stop the Raids Phoenix Super Bowl LVII 2023 Coverage
Arlene Mahoney is the executive director of the Southwest Recovery Alliance. She said that sex work is not inherently unsafe.
“What makes it unsafe is these bad laws,” Mahoney said. “And it pushes sex workers outside the fringes of society. So if they do experience violence, or something happens to them, there’s no recourse for them.”
“They’re rebranding in the face of us calling them out on a lie,” she said. “But you can’t have it both ways.”
She added: “Until sex workers are at the table, leading the conversation, [the McCain Institute] is just promoting misinformation, coercing people into choices they wouldn’t have otherwise made.” – Juliana Piccillo SWOP Tuscon
The notion that the Super Bowl feeds an increase in human trafficking is a “harmful myth,” Mahoney said. Some studies on the issue, including a 2014 report by Arizona State University researchers ahead of the 2015 Super Bowl in Glendale, found no link between increased sex trafficking and the sporting event.
Rather, Mahoney said, the specter of human trafficking is used to arrest adults engaging in consensual sex work — generally charged as misdemeanor prostitution, not as trafficking — which many activists believe should be decriminalized. “Sex work is not trafficking,” she added, noting that criminalizing all sex work can make witnesses to trafficking less likely to speak out.
Advocates point out that the workers, the supposed victims, are often charged. Nickerson said she spent five and a half years behind bars. It was devastating to her and her two children. “We lost our home… I lost health insurance, I lost all of our material belongings,” she explained.
That’s why these protesters are calling for sex work to be decriminalized. “Sex workers biggest fear is law enforcement, it’s not bad clients, but when you’re hiding from the police you often have to take shortcuts,” Piccillo said.
One reason the Republic flubbed its reporting so badly: it ignored the voices of sex workers on the topic. By contrast, other local news outlets — including KJZZ,Arizona Family, and the Phoenix New Times — reported on a Feb. 6 sex workers-rights demonstration in downtown Phoenix, interviewed activists, and made note of a website established by a coalition of local and national groups advocating for the decriminalization of all sex work: i.e., stoptheraids.org.
A grassroots network led by and for sex workers in Las Vegas offering support through mutual aid, community events, and political activism.
ESPLERP
Sex Workers and Erotic Service Provider Legal, Educational and Research Project. Peer-led training, organizing, and advocacy for the erotic service community.
International Sex Worker Foundation for Art, Culture and Education
2023 Stop the Raids committee members
SWOP Tucson
The Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP) is a national grassroots movement which focuses on improving the lives of sex industry workers by promoting safety, dignity and diversity in sex work, and fosters an environment that affirms individual choices and occupational rights.
Feed PHX
Our mission is to end food and housing insecurity, in PHX AZ, through Intersectional Activism and Integrated Community Action.
RIOT
(Harm) reduction is our thing. We love respect & support people who use drugs through harm reduction.
Southwest Recovery Alliance
Southwest Recovery Alliance is a peer led, guided, and directed regional grassroots organization dedicated to the implementation of evidence based public health strategies, policy transformation, and justice reform for people who use drugs and engage in sex work in Arizona.
ESPLERP
Sex Workers and Erotic Service Provider Legal, Educational and Research Project. Peer-led training, organizing, and advocacy for the erotic service community.
2022 Stop the Raids committee members
US PROStitutes Collective
A multiracial network of women campaigning for justice for sex workers, economic resources and decriminalization of sex work.
ESPLERP
Sex Workers and Erotic Service Provider Legal, Educational and Research Project. Peer-led training, organizing, and advocacy for the erotic service community.
The Sidewalk Project
The Sidewalk Project, a lived experience mobile harm reduction project and needs based syringe service providers, aids unhoused, drug-using and sex worker populations, providing residents of Los Angeles with case management including medical care and housing linkage and system navigation services
Strippers United
Strippers United is a labor union dedicated to unionizing strippers in California and beyond. We believe in sane and safe work environments for strippers and sex workers.
Free Speech Coalition
The 501(c)6 trade association that protects the rights & freedoms of those in the adult industry.
SWOP Sacramento
The Sex Workers Outreach Project- Sacramento is a California State social justice network dedicated to reducing harm, improving healthcare, and upholding both civil and human rights of sex workers and their communities.
