To Protect and Serve: A Conversation About Sex Work, Policing, and Health

Please join the New York City HIV Planning Group and the Open Society Public Health Program for a conversation about sex work, policing, and health in New York.

Although the police are charged with protecting safety and upholding human rights for everyone, repressive policing has often resulted in the very opposite for sex workers. Policing practices, such as the use of condoms as evidence of prostitution and systematic entrapment, significantly impact sex workers’ health.

At this event, we will talk about the history of police reform in this area, and the challenges that sex workers in New York face as they interact with the criminal justice system.

Speakers

• Ceyenne Doroshow is founder and director of G.L.I.T.S.
• Melissa Gira Grant is an author and journalist.
• John W. Meade Jr. is special assistant to the assistant commissioner of the NYC Health Department’s Bureau of HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control.
• Sebastian Kohn (moderator) is director of Sexual Health & Rights at the Open Society Public Health Program.
• Leigh Latimer is head of Exploitation Intervention at the Legal Aid Society.
• Alexis Rivera is project director of the National HIV Behavioral Surveillance System at the NYC Health Department’s Bureau of HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control.
• Jenna Torres is a community organizer for the Red Umbrella Project.
• KB White is a paralegal with the Legal Aid Society.