[Tucson Citizen]- A candlelight vigil to honor slain sex workers will take place at 6 p.m., Wednesday at El Tiradito Shrine at Main Avenue and Cushing Street south of the Tucson Convention Center.
Origami cranes with the names of 100 sex workers killed across the country in recent years will be hung at the shrine and each name will be read out. The list includes nine slain Arizona women since 2003, including one killed in Tucson this year who was not identified as a prostitute, said Juliana Piccillo,[pictured] founder of the Tucson chapter of the Sex Workers Outreach Project.
Tucson joins similar vigils that day in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., three in Canada, two in England and one in India, all falling under the umbrella of the sixth annual International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers.
“It’s a really moving event,” Piccillo said. “We’re trying to remember these are people – daughters, sisters, wives, grandchildren. We want to honor them as human beings. We’d like to restore some dignity and humanity to the women who were so dehumanized by violence.”
SWOP is collaborating with Wingspan’s Anti-Violence Project, the University of Arizona’s Women’s Resource Center and the Southern Arizona Center Against Sexual Assault. The event includes music, poetry reading and hot chocolate.
“The need for events like the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers has to do with destigmatizing a human rights issue,” said Allison Dumka, intern coordinator at the UA Women’s Resource Center. “We support the safety and dignity as well as protection of women in all lines of work.”
Thirty-one of the 48 prostitutes that Green River Killer Gary Ridgway in Seattle was convicted of slaying in the 1980s were teenagers. Piccillo said that’s a common trend for slain sex workers.
“People forget this is a child, a teen; many did prostitution for a month or two or six weeks,” said Piccillo, herself a former sex worker and also a former adjunct UA faculty member.
The annual Dec. 17 vigil for slain sex workers was launched in San Francisco in 2003 by Annie Sprinkle, a 1970s and 1980s porn star who got her first introduction to pornography at the Rialto Theatre while living in Tucson in 1973. The Green Valley Killer’s conviction inspired Sprinkle to start the day to end violence against sex workers.
Sprinkle is part of Sex Workers Outreach Project USA, based in San Francisco, which also was established in 2003. SWOP works to educate policy-makers and the public on the institutional harms committed against sex workers and advocates for alternatives, according to the Web site.
Tucson SWOP was the first chapter to spin off and now SWOP has 10 chapters across the country.
“Tucson has become this mecca for sex workers because we were doing the Sex Workers Arts Festival,” Piccillo said.
Piccillo started the Sex Workers Arts Festival in Tucson in 2001 with subsequent festivals in 2002, 2003 and 2004. The festival then went into hiatus but Piccillo plans to bring it back in September 2009.
The festival featured dozes of workshops and symposiums about prostitution and film showings scattered around downtown and even at UA, which triggered swirls of controversy. The festival garnered national media attention.
Piccillo said she has witnessed much change since her 2001 festival in the mainstream attention to prostitution as well as the willingness of sex workers to be public activists. She said her first festival featured no active sex workers, the last one had eight and she expects as many as 25 to take part in workshops next year.
“Now we’re seeing all these young girls,” Piccillo said. “They are so political and so active and they want to change the world.
“The industry is alive and well in Tucson. Tucson was a very small market for the sex industry for a long time. We still don’t have a lot, 30 or 40, in Tucson, but girls are coming in from California and Texas.”