STOP THE RAIDS!
Las Vegas Super Bowl LVIII

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.”

From Sex-work advocates say anti-trafficking campaigns do more harm than good
Kirsten Dorman February 8th, 2023

“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

From McCain Institute Gaslights Public with Op-Ed on Super Bowl/Sex Trafficking Panic
Stephen Lemons February 12, 2023

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.

From Civil Rights Advocates Protest Focus of Super Bowl Spike in Police Activity
Katya Schwenk February 10, 2023

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.

From Sex workers demanding prostitution be decriminalized at downtown Phoenix rally
Amy Cutler February 6, 2023

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.

From Arizona Republic Misreported Basic Facts about Sex Trafficking and the Super Bowl
Stephen Lemons February 16, 2023