Market Watch

“Sex workers are heavily affected by measures such as social distancing and business shutdowns because they simply cannot go to their workplaces anymore, and are seeing a sharp decrease in their clients. Unlike employees from ‘mainstream’ businesses, many sex workers are not eligible for unemployment benefits,” says Lynn Liu, the development and communications associate at the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center in New York City.

The first time Lynly Egyes met her, Borjas pulled a birth certificate out of the bag. Egyes was then a lawyer with the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center and had recently taken the case of a young immigrant transgender woman who was in jail, facing felony assault charges for defending herself against an attacker—an exceedingly common predicament.

Time Magazine

Egyes, 38, says she first met Borjas while working for the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center. At the time, Egyes remembers she was representing two incarcerated transgender women; Borjas “just showed up” with a much-needed birth certificate for one of the women, pulling it out of the Mary Poppins roller bag she always carried with her.

The Daily Beast

Jessica Peñaranda is director of movement building at the Sex Workers Project. An advocate of Decrim NY, she said there is still plenty to be done. “Until we can have fair wages, affordable housing, and a welfare system, society will continue to punish sex-workers. There are so many things to do to bring every part of the system together as a community.”

Queens Daily Eagle

“Trafficking is a lot more complex than that,” said Rosie Wang, director of Legal Advocacy and Services at the Sex Workers Project of the Urban Justice Center. “Traffickers will force their victims to do criminal actions for them, like shoplifting and carrying drugs. They’re not eligible for relief because they’re not prostitution-related but they are trafficking-related.”

NPR

Thompson is now a human rights lawyer and the managing director of the Sex Workers Project at the Urban Justice Center. It's among several organizations that are advocating bills to decriminalize sex work in New York City and New York state. They already have the support of various state lawmakers.

CNN

"Opposition to sex work comes from a deeply moralistic and religious place," says RJ Thompson, director of the Sex Workers Project in New York, a human rights lawyer and a long time sex worker himself. "But it has no public policy rationale."