 Thank you all for coming. Welcome to day two of our two-day series on movement lawyering. Very excited today to have two incredible speakers with us. First we have Danielle Blunt who is a professional in New York City based dominatrix and sex worker rights advocate. She has her master's in public health and researches the intersection of sex work and equitable access to tech. Blunt is one of the co-founders of Hacking Hustling, a collective of sex workers and accomplices working at the intersection of technology and social justice formed in response to SESTA FOSTA. Blunt is on the advisory board of Berkman Klein's initiative for a representative first amendment and she enjoys redistributing money from institutions, watching her community thrive and making men cry. We also have Kendra Albert who is a clinical instructor at the cyber law clinic where they teach students to practice technology law. They hold a degree from Harvard Law School and serve on the board of the ACLU of Massachusetts. They enjoy redistributing money from institutions, working on their solidarity practice and making people in power uncomfortable. So two amazing speakers and I'm going to turn it over to Kendra to begin the first part of our discussion, which is, oh, sorry, one announcement before I do that. You'll notice since we're in webinar mode that there's both a Q&A and a chat function. So what we'd like you to do is use the Q&A for any questions you have for the panelists. That allows everyone to see the questions you're posing and you can also upload other people's questions. So if you're thinking about asking something, you can check to see if someone else has already asked that question and you can bump it to the top. For everything else, if you want to make a comment, if you want to share a resource, if you want to complain, if you want to complain, you can message me personally. But for everything else, please use the chat functionality. And with that, I will turn it over to Kendra to get started. Awesome. Thank you, Mason. I'm super excited to be here and be in conversation with Blunt. You know, building off Afsana and Yuma's like fantastic introduction to movement lawyering yesterday, I thought we kind of blunt and I talked about this a little bit in advance and I think we're what we're kind of hoping to talk about is like sort of realistically how some like how conversations around like movement lawyering style relationships might work in practice. I'm using the example of some of our work together. So I figured like we kind of start with what I guess I've been jokingly calling our organizing meet cute, which was like how Blunt and I became connected and started working together. And then, you know, talk a little bit about how we think about our work and like some of the stuff that we've done together and, you know, how that fits into the movement lawyering frame and how that there may be other frameworks frameworks to think about it and then sort of how what lessons we might be able to learn from some of our work together that we're taking into the future and then like that may be helpful to use. So that's my plan Blunt. Anything you want to add to that? No, I'm really excited to chat about this and for the opportunity to reflect like this because from my perspective, I it it wasn't so much as like an intentionality of seeking out movement lawyers so much as screaming into the void and Kendra responded. You want to talk a little bit about that? Yeah, so I retweeted it yesterday but I hacking hustling was formed in response to SESTA FOSTA and Melissa Giri Grant and I and some other comrades put on some heart like immediate harm reduction programming with iBeam and it was out folks what iBeam is. Yeah, sorry. So iBeam is like an art in tech organization in Brooklyn that funds some pretty awesome work and they had recently done a panel series on like women in tech and sex work was locked out of the conversation so we invited them to continue the conversation and this was and our programming there which then turned into the organization that hacking hustling is and so while we were organizing against FOSTA SESTA we were met with this sort of deafening silence from the tech community from tech lawyers from just about everyone other than sex workers and very few allies so I was researching content moderation and doing as much research as I could because people who I expected to be having these conversations weren't and I believe it was I was reading custodians of the internet and saw that Tarleton was giving a talk at I think Berkman Klein and Kendra just happened to be moderating that conversation and I like raised my hand on Twitter and like tweeted I didn't even tweet at you it's just something we were discussing but I tweeted at Berkman Klein and Tarleton asking about how you can write a book on content moderation and have a whole chapter on section 230 and not ever mention FOSTA SESTA and Kendra do you want to sort of talk a little bit about what your response was yeah sure so I think I asked the question to Tarleton at the at the session and sort of you know a little bit of backstory prior to like where sort of that that moment was that like sex worker rights issues were something I've been sort of paying attention to kind of in the background for a while I had read Melissa Gerigrantz playing the whore which is an excellent book if folks haven't read it and like sort of have been roughly following some of the aftermath of FOSTA SESTA and the things that had happened like the organizing before mostly I think through the lens of EFF sort of using talking about sex workers and working with sex workers a little bit in their organizing against FOSTA SESTA so you know it came time to like ask that question right and so I asked the question and I don't really remember what Tarleton's response was but then afterwards I sort of like reached out to Blunt on Twitter and like found the thread and was like hey like I hope I asked it okay like I didn't see there was like a longer bit that Blunt had like a screenshot of this very verbose yeah and I don't think I asked quite that I think I just literally was like so what about FOSTA SESTA right like but like happy to talk more and so you know then we ended up like I think having like a phone call where I got to hear more about what hacking hustling had been doing and I actually had tried to tune into the Ibima event but I hadn't been quite able to hear it and sort of we started talking about like what I don't know what next steps look like or felt like for hacking hustling and like how we could be I could like maybe I could be useful and I think one thing to note about those initial conversations is I think I was very much approaching them from like a lawyer frame right like not necessarily that I would take hacking hustling on as a client but like oh like my expertise is as a lawyer right like what I'm bringing to this is my ability to interpret FOSTA SESTA right like um or like my ability to sort of do legal reasoning or whatever um and that wasn't exactly what what you were looking for from me can you tell me more tell us more about that sure yeah we've been just sort of very frustrated and trying to get in response and I also want to note that your initial response to me made me like very excited to pursue working together having conversations together because your response was something like yes like this is really exciting for me like I've been really interested in thinking about FOSTA SESTA but like didn't want to do that without input from sex workers and I was like great like an ally great amazing um and so we sort of took it from there I think we had a phone conversation and then you invited myself and a few other sex workers to Berkman Klein to have a conversation and what I also remember about that conversation is that it was a group of folks who have access to those institutional spaces who benefit from the privileges of being in being employed by or going to Harvard um sitting in a room listening to three sex workers sort of scream about how horrible this legislation was and like what our fears were and like what we were experiencing in community and like reflecting on that it very much was in alignment with the work that hacking hustling had been doing where people who are people who have power and institutions like give that power to are being put in a situation where they first have to listen to the communities who are impacted and who they're purporting to serve um so that that meeting to me followed the same sort of way that we planned our initial programming at hacking husk uh at ibeam which was the first day was a panel of sex workers talking about their experiences with navigating online spaces losing access to these online spaces and then it was followed up by a day of of we actually found T for tech like a trans-led organization providing harm reduction materials who also had sex working um teachers to give the harm reduction digital security trainings which is actually very cool um so yeah so it it it was really amazing that our first time like my first time entering the berkman client space was like people were really interested in listening before like moving into like brainstorming solutions yeah and i think one thing to flag there is we also did sort of think about like what were the next steps in brainstorming solutions and there were a couple different things that came out of even that meeting i think uh there was sort of a harm reduction zine on um sort of reduce like understanding like financial systems and how platforms track you with an eye towards reducing the chances that folks weren't getting their financial accounts shut down because that's something that happens for folks who aren't aware to sex workers like all the time um uh and then also like we drafted actually with the clinics from clinic students like model letter to send to a platform that sort of deleted your account because there was like sexual content on it um not that that held any particular legal weight like i like we don't there's no like legal claim you can bring um but like just in terms of having access to like a draft of like template letter that's a lawyer language um you know that was something we worked on i what i remember about that first meeting is i was really nervous because i was like really worried that like we weren't you know like i don't know it wasn't going to be useful or whatever and that i went and bought very fancy donuts because i remember the donut i wanted to like suggest that y'all were worthy of very fancy donuts and that my colleagues in the clinic including mason and uh adam nagy and other many other one are wonderful folks um uh like helped me carry all the coffee equipment upstairs because i like felt very strongly that it should be like hospitable i don't know like that you can take like uh you know my relationship to my Judaism is uh questionable at best but like the Jewish mother instinct that like i will make sure you get the appropriate fancy food is like strong right um so yeah and then i think one of the things that we worked on from there actually was something that came to fruition like yesterday which was you know as i started prepping for this conversation because one of the things i also wanted to do was talk a little bit about the legal context of pasta again because that's like where i kind of felt comfortable i sort of realized that like nobody had really written a ton on it and it wasn't really clear what it did so i sort of did some analysis but was also like this is vastly incomplete um and we ended up along with uh hacking hustling comrade laura lily um sort of working with the Cornell gender justice clinic um to sort of produce this very long form guide and every time we thought we were done it like grew three sizes so it's 87 pages it's on srsrm i tweeted it yesterday um and uh that you know it's not i think it in some ways it's not a great example of movement lawyering because um it's like not you know it's not really community but on the other hand it is in response to a need that we sort of identified together which was the lack of ability to really understand what pasta was doing and to be able to point people to things and i i also want to backtrack just a little bit about framing that like as an act of movement lawyering because it was meeting addressing the needs of the community i think better preparing other lawyers to have the conversation it was impossible to find a lawyer um after falsa sesta was signed into law to give like a know your rights training because no one knew what the law did or no one understood the law so i think that that did meet a need as well as well like what i think you're not giving yourself credit for there is what we also did was we provided like a brief like a little card that could be handed out to street-based workers who like were interested in knowing what falsa sesta was there was also like educational components a few weeks ago we did like a legal literacy training for sex workers which i think like wasn't may not have been directly related to that um to that project but was informed by the work that like you and Lorelai and the folks at Perkman Klein and Cornell had been working on and provided a space for sex working community or i also encourage lawyers who are interested in learning about how to like present this information in a way that is accessible to community um to create that space that's fair um yeah in some ways like that i i do think in some ways it was the analysis we needed to do a lot of the community based work even if it isn't directly accessible to community and i think that's that's fair um i'm wondering if we want to talk a little bit about the event um like the bigger event that we did um and that process and then maybe we can sort of uh migrate towards talking a little bit about how we think about like movement wiring as like a term or to describe what we're talking about or like other lessons lessons we've learned um yeah um yeah i think that's something that so something that hacking hustling is interested in is moving these conversations about how sex workers utilize technology in the ways that sex workers are harmed by the same technologies that they need to use to survive and stay stay in touch with community make money and to organize and to like fight legislation like falsa stesta and to fight legislation like earn it um that we really want to be we want to be having these conversations primarily by and for community but something that is also very important to me into the work that hacking hustling does is that these conversations are also being had at spaces who have institutional power and i think that people who who like their mo is already operating within those spaces of institutional power often overlook um how much can come from uh like attaching movement work to a name like they're definitely pros and cons to this but like if if my organization collaborates with berkman kline or has berkman kline's name on something which we'll talk more about later um that then allows the work that we've been doing to be seen as the academy as worthy of putting two years of resources to you and then collaborating with cornell to create the legal document that we needed and served a need of the community um so when i think about programming i think about it in two ways it's like how is this accessible to the community that i'm working with that i'm a part of how and then how can i like encourage gently encourage people who have institutional power to share it by inviting us into those spaces um i note that tim in the q&a has been like kind of just said they talk about how they screwed up and i haven't heard about that yet so this is perfect this is i'm so glad you asked that's him because uh actually like what blunt just said about not understanding like how powerful these institutions are as like computers and legitimizers of work um with something i didn't understand before i started working with one like and for folks who don't know a ton about my career i've been affiliated to berkman kline for a very long time basically since i started doing tech policy work and i think you know it when you do have access to these like very fancy institutions it's easy to take for granted the little legitimacy that they bring to your work or that they're like power the power of that name on your resume and so i think when i started working with blunt i didn't really understand why hacking hustling was really so invested in throwing an event at harvard um and this actually led to a really interesting news communication which i'm going to talk about for a second which was i felt really i even before i started working with one super formally i still i i felt strongly about making sure folks got paid and i feel way more strongly about that no is anyone who is working with me knows or has worked with me knows um but i ran into a lot of barriers around getting hacking hustling folks paid when we were trying to put on an event harvard and i think and it made me really uncomfortable because i didn't want i felt weird going to blunt and saying like i can't pay you because i understand like how important getting money for this kind of work is and so like i think basically what i did was like stop responding to email for three weeks uh out of like shame um and then finally like i think we finally got on the phone and i was like look like i've tried and i just like don't know how to pay you right like i don't like i cannot pay you what this work is worth and i don't like do you want to cancel and then what one do you want to talk about what you said yeah and i was i was trying to like parse that and i was like and because i was like canceling wasn't on my mind like we do like first of all we do this shit for free all the fucking time and like that's fucked up um but also i want to like call out that for the first year hacking hustling was 100 funded through like our main organizers direct labor in the sex trades and through a client donation that went through a 501 see-through um so like i frame sort of all of my work as hustling so when we're having this conversation about movement lawyering i'm like oh like like hustling academic institutions to shift their power i i can talk about that um and so we actually since we had that client donation hacking hustling was able to then which we had done with ibeam as well is like ibeam um was able to find like x amount of money and where we felt people should be paid more for their labor we were able to fill in the rest which is sort of what we also did with the event that we put on with berkman kline um but it wasn't just the access to the financial resources that harvard has which they do have it was just very difficult to find them for this purpose uh we were able to pay people through the work that our main organizers were doing in the sex trades and we paid people fairly well um and it so i was like don't worry like we hustle in other spaces too we got this covered and um having this event take place at harvard is something that would get press coverage in a way that it wouldn't normally is something that will bring these ideas and this community's expertise to people who don't normally have access to that and like i think there were a few things that like came from that um and i don't know if you want to talk about like a little bit of the internal process of like organizing that and like work the work with uh whose corner and yeah from it yeah so i think that like through that event i got introduced to the folks at whose corner isn't anyway which is a sex worker focused street sex workers homeless and drug user focused mutual aid org out in western mass um and you know like there's some of the stuff that they wanted to talk they sort of that some of the stuff where they needed like not necessarily legal advice but sort of counseling that had to do with law stuff um and that like we uh i ended up working with them on that and then it turned out that they had this need where they really what they were looking for was like record sealing for a number of their members who've had prior felonies or misdemeanors on their records and that was the thing where actually i think like this is the point in which i feel like i like maybe cross the threshold into like movement lawyer right where i was like oh i could learn how to do that i could find somebody to do that like that can't be that like not that that can't be that hard because yeah it's hard work and it's real but like the fact that this is not my core area of expertise and like the work that you know i studied in law school it doesn't mean that that needs not real and it's not important so like folks i'm in community with and like if the need is real and the work work is important to folks i'm in community with and it's like in my capacity then like that's a thing that i should be doing so that project actually got put on hold because of the pandemic but like we like did have we were working with them to figure out exactly how we were going to like everything from like who where can we get a photocopier um well like when we're in holy oak mass like notarizing all this paperwork right like that was like the thing you know and i think that that felt really good because this is a community like whose corn is in any ways an amazing group of folks doing really really fantastic work and i got to know them because blunt and red who organized the hacking hustling event on thursday um blunt is probably about to hustle by putting their link in the chat and i'm here for it um uh uh you know said we don't want this to just be sex workers who work primarily online in terms of like who has access to the space and we want to hear different sets of concerns different folks like different uh views on sex work and surveillance um and they they knew that whose corner folks and whose corner folks were able to come because they were paid through the acts of hacking hustling so i think that's like super important yeah oh i was gonna say and also i think like the with the work of hacking hustling is also sort of it's like bridging gaps between communities and institution bridging gaps between like who is funded for their labor and who is not like who is speaking um on behalf of themselves and who's speaking like i think there's a very big difference between um like inviting me to have this conversation with you kendra and like then or like you then telling this as a story as if like i'm not a person who is also involved in this work and like i've seen a lot of and especially like with working with marginalized communities who have like extensive histories of trauma i've also seen lawyers who take another approach of telling the stories for their clients and i think that it's like a radically different approach and what was so important for us in the planning the event at hacking hustling and planning events in general is that it's not just representative of the folks who trade sex online so while a lot of my research is about losing access to online spaces um we wanted to make sure that there were street-based workers at this event talking about the ways that they're policed and surveilled on the streets we thought that it was incredibly important to also have the perspective of our incarcerated comrades and had our my comrade red uh called up alisha walker who i'll also drop the go fund me in the link in a second who is an incarcerated survivor of gender-based violence who's currently locked up in chicago um and middle of a pandemic but she was able to call in and i think that was the most moving part of the um of the conference that we put on for me was like hearing the process that red goes through to like i feel like a lot of people just like maybe like haven't called folks who are incarcerated and like hearing that process or like not knowing if we would actually be able to get in touch with lily to hear what she wanted to say and what she wanted to share with folks and i think that that was my favorite part and i think like broadening the conception of like what is technology and how does technology affect and impact people was also a very important part of that project yeah do we want to talk a little bit about movement layering as hustling um which yeah blood came up before this call and i love it uh so i'm gonna let her talk about it for a little and then i can talk about my sort of relation to you and reaction to it yeah so when you asked me to have a conversation with you about movement lawyering i was like i don't know anything about movement lawyering and like i hadn't like i also think that this conversation is interesting because it's bringing to light a lot of work that we were both doing internally and like i didn't know some of the like fears or hesitations that maybe like you had that you're talking about now um and like it wasn't like i said in the beginning it wasn't my intention to like to put on this programming at harvard when i reached out to you i was literally screaming into a void you were one of the only people who responded um in a way that made me feel comfortable with engaging with you and um i i thought of all of my work as an act of hustling whether or not it's like directly my labor in the sex trades and like like all of my work is currently funded by my like direct labor in the sex trades all of the and this was something that i believe it was yumna mentioned on the last call that her work is largely funded through the corporate law that she does and i'm like i oh i know something about that i know something about finding like alternate ways of funding work that is traditionally unpaid and so much of sex worker organizing is unpaid and my my work comes out of a space of harm reduction care coordination which i frame as like hustling fucked up systems that were never meant to make work in the first place for like beautiful people that i care deeply about and like trying to bridge that gap of service for people trying for sex working people who are trying to access healthcare and so when it moved into more of like a space of tech i i saw that bridge that needed to be get that gap that needed to be bridged as these spaces with institutional support and power and so i just truly think of movement lawyering is like how can i hustle lawyers and people with access to uh institutional power to have the conversations that i want um them to be having and encourage them to do that i love i just want to like note that that frame of like how do you like serve how do you like get these institutions that were never meant to take care of folks to take care of folks better is like one that i really love and i think is really beautiful and i think it also speaks to like things that i think about in my work and i think that's like a point of commonality between us um yeah i mean i think that like i think i often make this joke that like blunt taught me how to hustle and it's totally true so if any i know there are some folks on this call who have benefited from like my like advice about how to get paid and like i don't know where you are on this i love teaching people how to hustle but like i think part of it like you know uh institutions often make us feel like we should be grateful for whatever we get and like i think what i've like learned um what i've learned from working with blunt is like just like no ask for more right like why like often our relationship to asking and sort of to pushing and like is that like a lot of us who have had access to these spaces are afraid because like maybe our access will get taken away or maybe like we'll get someone will get annoyed at us and like for me like i think what i've learned in some of our work together is like that pales in comparison to the hearts that our people are experiencing and that like that like the people i care about and who i am in community with are experiencing and so like it's my fucking job to like be able to be like okay like does this make you a little bit uncomfortable when i ask for this thing like i'm sorry but like actually the people who needed it right like and that was like i don't think i had that frame or that understanding before i started doing working community because i think that it's really easy especially as a lawyer who's where you're kind of roll constraints like the whole point of like certain forms of lawyering is to sort of like put a barrier between you and the client like to separate you and like from the client in terms of their emotional needs or their like material needs like i think massachusetts may be just allowed for lawyers to occasionally pay for food for their clients but like you know like public defender and friends who are public defenders and often they can't actually pay for like a sandwich for their client who's really hungry because like that's a violation of the ethical rules and like that kind of relationality is such a big part of actually being like working together rather than like like you know sort of standing up and telling the trauma story of in order to like you know serve some greater political point and i also think for me the other thing i'll say about it is like it's really changed the way i think about scholarship so you know i don't produce a lot of traditional legal scholarship it's just like not really my bag and i think part of that is because like obviously i have opinions plenty of opinions on how things should be but you know in some ways like many of the subjects i'm most expert on i'm most interested in doing client work because work for clients or sort of community work because like that's you know what i think about what should happen doesn't feel that meaningful right like you know i i was talking to a staffer a legislative staffer for a senator about like 230 reform and they were like what do you think and i'm like i don't know how to answer that question like you know like i don't i think what i said like what i said was like the hacking hustling party line of like from our last press release of like here the five things that we're thinking about right like because like blunt taught me how to hustle i'm not that much of an idiot but like you know this the relationship of academics and employers of this idea of like our personal beliefs are what you inform our work rather than like oh like actually like what is what are the community of folks that i work with like want and need out of this this like moment from me yeah and i'm thinking back to a lot of when there was just like infinite programming and infinite uh bills about 230 how um no one was talking about like the communities that would be impacted about everyone was talking about like platform liability and i'm like people are literally dying because of this legislation they need to be at the front and the center of these conversations and not added on as an afterthought like if the work isn't centering the people who are literally feeling it like it's like platforms are not people people are people and we need to like listen to humans um who are impacted by it by these policies um and yeah and i think there's like this difference like i'm i'm thinking of it of like um movement lawyer lawyering versus like savior fetishism yeah of like and like the power the how different those power dynamics need to be so that you're not um causing harm by telling someone's story as if it's your own um that like you as a lawyer then don't like own that story and then like build a brand around that yeah and i think that like part of it is also i think something um afsana said yesterday about like who's the expert right like i think a lot of now having worked with hacking hustling and blunt for a while like i'm not an expert in very much right like um of the stuff we talk about and like you know yeah like i maybe know more about 230 than some of the other folks we talk we talk to or that like are in our conversations but like you know um i as even as a lawyer like as a lawyer have so much to learn about movement work about organizing about like sex workers about like folks lives and where they're at and how i can be helpful and you know i think that's really humbling but it also like i think first as someone who like likes to learn new things like that it's really you know just like even since we've been in the pandemic there's like now a group chat that is like very that at times has been very active and just like feeling um close to and in community with with folks in terms of being like okay like this is who i talk to every day right like and i think we like at this point like often talk like every day um so you know just thinking about it like less as like oh this is my like this is my movement lawyering work and we're like oh this is like who i talk to who i work with you know who hears me like uh who watches me drink too much rosé on zoom and then not finish the book club book you know like that kind of there's another thing i screwed up to him i didn't finish the book club book to be fair nobody else did either um but uh i think you got further than i did no i maybe but kate kate got further than kate finally finished um anyway so i wonder before we sort of open up for questions because we're like sort of uh nearing uh we're about more than a little more than halfway through anything else do you want to add i know we talked a little bit about your view about sort of like institutional uh frankie has lots to say uh about this particular matter um i can vamp for a second well uh we're good he's the dog is under control sorry about that um it no he's not um frankie is also an important part of this movement lawyering relationship um so i i'm glad that he's getting his time after care puppy um yeah i think one thing that we talk a lot about and that i think that this conversation helped facilitate is that a lawyer who is doing movement work doesn't necessarily represent the institution that they work for or the beliefs of that institution and like i remember having a conversation with you about like how important it felt to have like a harvard affiliation just like uh of some of the programming that hacking hustling has done and like how that will literally help us get grants to fund the unpaid labor that we're doing and you're like that happened because like i put like the internal work that the a movement lawyer is doing within their institution doesn't reflect like the values or the principles of that institution necessarily and like so um like berkman kline or harvard might be happy to like have me on this panel or have like kendra push to have like this really radical conference and give us space and a little bit of money but like i as an actively sex working woman who's naked on the internet not going to get a fellowship from berkman kline or from other institutions like that and i think that that's something that's become really frankie is mad um that's something that is like become more and more apparent to me of like what are the ways that like my privilege allows me to move in and out of these academic spaces and like how can i create a bridge for other folks to come with me and then like what are the barriers that like i might be blind to because of my ability to like sort of like move through those spaces that actually like like hinder me from like moving forward and i think what i um what i'm also interested in is or like talking about is like kendra is awesome and a great accomplice and like is consistently inviting me into those spaces in a way that like allows me to have these conversations publicly but also like gives me more options in the work that i do and the choices that i make and like will ideally hopefully eventually end in funding and i think that that like cannot be like i can't overlook that enough of like what it looks like to be invited into a space in a way that isn't just like which is like valuing my expertise and my experience as well as providing me with opportunities to move further into those spaces without that person yeah i think that's so important because i i think that what you don't want is to movement layer to always end up as the gatekeeper who like you know is like oh you only get access to these spaces through me because like that's not a healthy that's a really shitty dynamic um and like you know like i will have succeeded when like hacking hustling throws a conference at an ivy league institution and i have literally nothing to do with it like that'll be battle i mean there and actually i will have succeeded when we've abolished prisons and when sex workers are criminalized and you know lots of other stuff but like you know in terms of short-term movement goals um but yeah so i see afsana has a had threw a question in our in our chat so i'm going to take that first and then if folks want to throw if they have questions for either of us in in the in the q and a would really love to hear them or just topics you'd like us to talk more about that's also that also works um afsana asks if we could discuss the notion of recruiting and creating more movement layers and how you've been successful slash unsuccessful at in doing yet um it's it's definitely it's a hard question because i actually don't think we've spent a ton of time but well thinking of i was gonna say and that's not true um i think like we we haven't necessarily explicitly set it as a goal but i think like i've watched blunt sort of being work with like bringing law students in to like these conversations i think one tricky thing i will flag and then i'll let blunt sort of react as well is that um there are ways in which my positioning at a technology law clinic is really ideal for the work that we're doing um because uh you know that's consistent often with some of the needs that hacking pestling has in terms of subject matter but often folks who go into a technology clinic are not necessarily always the most motivated by like social justice or like have the background in like sex worker issues like if i worked at a gender justice clinic um like the one accord now right it might be easier for me to attract students who are like really invested in doing work that serves sex workers um and sort of ready to do movement wiring um i don't feel like there's many things i love about my current position but i definitely don't feel like the majority of students i work with like that's their their dream is to become a movement layer so maybe i'm just like pushing them a little bit further towards doing public interest work even if i'm not sort of being like being like movement wiring that's the paradigm um i also think i'm still learning how to do it and so like there is definitely a like oh you can totally teach while you're learning things um but some of the work we do feels really high stakes and i don't want to harm people and i think for me that sometimes i think lets me to be leads me to be more cautious about including folks i don't know super well in it because like i don't like i'm so grateful for the trust that folks place in me and like the conversations that i get to be a part of and i wouldn't want to do anything to jeopardize like the people who like trusted me in that way blunt if you have other responses oh you're muted muted i'm muted um it's so interesting to me because it it's not like um i was like intentionally seeking out movement lawyers when like kendra and i began like our working relationship um that it wasn't like an intentional process so much as like one that evolved which i think is also really interesting framework for like just being in content in contact with community i think is a helpful way to like push people and like recruit movement lawyers like i think that the folks the like law students who came to the hacking hustling event that we put on at harvard like would not have gotten that type of education that and like heard the expertise of the communities that they may or may not be working with without that and so then the other thing that i think about is also really important is like we're talking about our relationship of like a sex working person and someone who's working at a like tech law clinic and like i'm currently shadow banned online and at like constant risk of being deplatformed and when i think about kendra in my relationship i think about like what would have happened if i did not have access to twitter and i could not have asked that question it's something that comes up a lot for me so i think like fighting against bills like earn it and fighting against bills like foster sesta um because not only does it like like it these laws have killed people and people have died because of these laws and they also um destabilize movement work and destabilize our ability to be present online and speak for ourselves and so when i when i when i think about this i think it's like all so related to me of like fighting for things that allows me to have the same access to online spaces as my non-sex working peers do as part of that work because if if these communities disappear from online how are you going to get in how are you going to get in touch with them especially in the middle of a pandemic um and i think it's another it's just another layer that like invisibilizes and like decreases the power of a community when people are like banned from these from these spaces um and yeah i think it's just a matter of like inviting community in to educate you and this is also something that i did as my job at persist health project which serves sex working people in new york state accessing health care one of my jobs was providing best practice trainings for um for doctors and med school students and we hacking hustling also provides like best practice trainings for for like people in the academy who are interested in like bettering their like sex worker competency and i think that that something that came out of that when i was teaching i've like taught those classes at like all the major new york city teaching hospitals and the the med students were like this is this hour and a half is the most that we've ever talked about sex in our entire three years of med school so far um so i just i thought was a feedback that i found really interesting um i had something i wanted to add but it's gone that's fine um mason do you want to hop in with the question yeah i was just going to jump in and you know once again ask uh you know anyone who has questions yeah p please feel free to ask them but uh so first of all thank you this has just been really incredible and it's really inspiring hearing both of you speak every time i interact with you um uh one one question i wanted to dig a little deeper into is uh blunt you specifically mentioned you know bringing in um different members of the sex working community who have different needs who are affected in different ways by the same policy changes um and that's something that you know i've kind of started to learn about moving lawyer it was one of the first things that i really became aware of communities that often look or represented as being monolithic from the outside once you begin interacting with them are not and people have different interests in what may be helpful to one person could be harmful to another so i was just wondering if the two of you could speak a little bit more about navigating that and the you know the experience of making sure that um the communities you're working with are not reduced to those people who have the most access or the or the most voice yeah i think um the work of hacking hustling is i'm sort of sort of starting to conceptualize it as like three three-fold of like tech tech law policy that affects how we interact with these online spaces what happens when we lose access to those online spaces and making sure that we're providing harm reduction resources for our streetworking comrades um that were also like figuring out like what the techniques of folks who are trading sex on the street are and um as well as like being in touch with our incarcerated comrades and so that's sort of like how i've been conceptualizing the work that we've been doing and i'm always like interested in in learning more and how also like learning more and how to do better and to make sure that i'm not not speaking over other people or i'm not providing the hacking hustling isn't providing resources to people of what we think people should be learning but rather what people actually need and like meeting the needs of community by not assuming them i think that uh makes a ton of sense and the thing i will i want to just add is like let's set a lot of nice things about me um which is very kind but i think one thing that like i don't want to lose track of is how amazing hacking hustling is and one is specifically at making sure that we're not just hearing from like the sex workers with the most privilege one of the terms i learned for the first time at the hacking hustling community last november oh my god eternity ago right like um it was the term hierarchy um which is just this idea that like within sex work and sex work adjacent fields and blunt please correct me if i fuck this up um there are like inherent hierarchies about how folks interact um and the uh and that like i didn't know that as like when i started working with one um but you know to one's credit she knew that right and she like had thought about how do we bring in different folks how do we how do we be making sure that hacking hustling isn't just like you know folks talking about sasta fosta online but also serving the needs of like street-based sex workers i also think how you might show up for folks really does vary based on what their needs are obviously i mean that sounds obvious when i say it but just to like be very clear which is that you know if hacking hustling might need to build analysis and like that's something i can do but like uh some of uh like our street-based comrades might need money and that's a step like and that's like they they don't need legal advice they just need money so they can pay rent right like and that like you know like a letter for their po officer so they can come speak at harvard yeah and like you know being willing to show up in different ways and thinking about like you know do like i think if you'd ask me like six years ago i might be like well maybe i'm a little uncomfortable like giving money to these folks i also work with because i think this isn't going to reduce me to my money and like now i'm like oh i'm sorry i like i actually um i was on being interviewed for something of where it was for a non-profit and they asked me like they were like we want to be one of your primary places you donate and in all seriousness to this folks of non-profits i was like actually i don't really give to many non-profits anymore most of my giving is to sex worker mutual aid funds and they just kind of like looked at me and i was like oh like is that not like and that now just feels like a natural extension of like this work um and being in community with folks is showing up for them right like and that can mean bill analysis and they can also mean money um and so yeah that feels important and i i think something that was very interesting about the work that hacking hustling has done is we've we conduct like very casual like needs assessments before putting on programming to sort of assess that like what we think folks need is accurate and if it's not like where do we fill in the gaps as well as when we were conducting our research on falsa sesta which like i also want to point out that the only actual research that exists on the impacts of falsa sesta have been done by sex workers um i think there are two or three reports one which was done by hacking hustling but we also wanted incredible um i will throw the link in the okay perfect thank you um which when we did the the research on hacking hustling we distributed it primarily online so that means that it's only accessible to folks who have access to the internet so we also partnered with whose corner is it anyways the really amazing um organization that kendra was talking about early in western mass to do the survey with their community at one of their meetings and so what i i learned a lot about that practice because i worked really um we hired and paid Naomi to modify the survey so that it was both accessible and accessible to the community using the language that that community uses um and also we added on like 40 questions for them that they were just interested in for grant purposes um so like the question like we had like the questions that were the same so that we would analyze it and then also then just gave them all of the raw data so that they can do whatever the fuck they want with it like that data is theirs to use to like hopefully help them get more money and be used for grants but what what's something that's so interesting that came out of that is that folks who are working on the street have no fucking idea what falsa cesta is what they did say is that they noticed like on their their small stroll in western mass they noticed like 10 to 15 more street-based workers hanging around and like had heard about falsa cesta from them um so i i think that it it helped contextualize the research in a way that falsa cesta like pushes people into unsafe or working conditions but people who did not have access to those safer working conditions in the first place didn't know what falsa cesta was we have three questions in the queue i'm going to read them out loud for people who are watching this after the fact first one from rom two two-part question how can technologists amplify cause and what is your favorite resource about sex work 101 for non-sex workers is that sorry can you say that again yes uh first one was how can technologists amplify cause so i think what can people with access to a technical expertise or technical platforms due to amplify uh causes they support and then what is your favorite resource about sex work 101 for non-sex workers sure i think um melissa gira grants playing the whore is an excellent book as well as revolting prostitutes are the two books that i would recommend diving into first i would also suggest following sex workers and sex worker organizations online um to like see what what they're talking about and like being in like internet space community with folks because i think often our like social media followings are so siloed that we don't see see this um and like don't see how the communities who are directly impacted are responding and also because the platform is literally erasing people from it is also part of the problem so being intentional about making sure that you're seeing community responses to can i just add something to that one is that okay um so i think that one like ram you asked uh how to contain technologies and this amplify this cause and i think like there are maybe like two things i want to flag like one is sort of like i think one of the lessons i've learned as a lawyer in this space is actually letting go of my identity as a lawyer and just being like what are the other capabilities that i have right like i have a twitter account with probably mostly followers who are in tech policy i have access to institutional spaces right like literally uh uh physical spaces at harvard in non-pandemic times and zoom spaces at harvard in pandemic times um or uh you know other uh access to other kinds of other kinds of resources um and i think that they part like one question i would ask first is how do i let go of my professional identity in doing this work and just show up as a person who wants to help um and then i think it can be helpful to also as you sort of get to understand people's experience better through doing the one-on-one work and through showing up as a person then think about okay how can i show up as a technologist like what's going on there right so i think that that's that feels like a sort of part of the answer to me as well blunt here no i'm just echoing that it's like when so many sex workers are shadow banned like melissa jeer grant was trying to at me in something the other day and couldn't find me because i'm named suggestion banned so she literally couldn't find my account to tag in a post and like with a berkman client i'm not tagged in any of those posts i'm not sure if it was just for typing my name or if because people literally couldn't find my name to at um so i think thinking about how sex workers do not have access to these same tools that people take for granted like both academic like power as well as the ability to be seen on social media is part of that um i see a someone's asking a question which i feel like is somewhat related can you address how platforms especially payment processors for your processing money related to sex work affect these um direct giving efforts and i'm gonna drop a link right here that we put together on a count shutdowns and a harm reduction guide which i think is interesting and helpful about like understanding internally the way that this like oftentimes like network shutdown of sex worker financial processes happen um and right now hacking hustling is conducting research on um content moderation and in response to like the police uprisings against uh the police violence against black folks um as well as like the intersection between sex worker and activist because a lot of activism is actually funded by folks direct labor in the sex trade because it is oftentimes unpaid labor um and one thing that we're finding one of the common themes is how sex workers losing access to financial technologies um disrupts movement work is one thing that we're focusing on and our ability to provide mutual aid to each other especially in a pandemic where we're not allowed to just we're not we're not as able to just hand people cash which is how we paid people at the first hacking hustling event was just handing people cash before they spoke which felt very important because sex workers always get paid before rendering a service ideally um is none of us have access to the same financial technologies it's really difficult to move money in a community whenever like i've lost access to like three or four different financial services and when we were paying folks for the hacking hustling event it was like coming out of like my my personal account and then being reimbursed but like um because i had to use like four different payment processors in order to be able to provide everyone with stipends um that yeah i think people just also overlook how impactful it can be to provide someone with money who needs money to give them that money like that is a hugely radical act that is very effective yeah and i think the other thing i'll say there is you know my experience on the front of some of this from the harvard side is the uh institutions often have no ability to meaningfully assess risks to folks when they're paying them um so like you know the wallet name that you have that you need to get paid under may be very different than the name you organize under or peer under as a sex worker and so if you appear at an institution and like they need to be on honorarium but it has to go to the wallet name rather than the name you work under even though the name you work under is the name you spoke under that's like a point of connection between two identities that you may not want to connect it as a sex worker and like oftentimes you know sometimes as like as someone who works at the institution part of my job is like trying to navigate that right like being like okay like like can i talk about the case western thing okay uh so like we were on a panel together with case west at case western and like they were like oh like we're want to pay you which was great um but then it was like oh like we need you to fill out this w9 or whatever and like it's all this personal information that blend didn't necessarily want to give so any like what we did was like it was like just pay tendra and tendra will pass along the money right and like that works because like we have a pretty close relationship where that was something that like i think we both thought that was going to work fine in terms of trust but like that's like you know some institutions would definitely not do that right um and the um and like to your point to rihanna's question about sort of uh like the way in which account shutdowns and financial shutdowns affect folks like you know um i think institutions often take for granted access to financial infrastructure whether it's like certain kinds of bank accounts under whichever name or uh ven mal or paypal or even if it's stuff like paying folks like two months after an event right like or reimbursing people like that's something that um institutions often take for granted and people don't have a lot of space to be like this is not cool and this doesn't work for me and yeah yeah no truly it's something i think that everyone in academia could learn is to pay people before they render a service is just like mind boggling to me that this is not common practice but like asking um like a marginalized community member for uh legally revealing information about them without understanding how that could like expose them to potential harm um i think it's something that definitely needs to be considered as well as like how quickly are they getting those funds like i will often pay people either before or like right after something ends with a direct transfer that lands like directly in their account so they have access to that money the same day or like the next day when it when it is processed and um when i have had to postpone events i have offered to pay people up front when the event was supposed to occur in case people were relying on that payment to get through the month um yeah so i know we're at 2 p.m and i see there's a couple of questions left but um just i guess want to um sort of wrap up by one are there any other like thoughts you want to share um or things you want to say um i mean i'm just really excited for the opportunity to have this conversation and sort of reflect on our relationship because i feel like we were both doing a lot of like invisible work or like work that also i wasn't super aware that i was that i was doing just by like like like it being radical just asking for access to these spaces i was just like i'm just trying to bridge bridge these gaps so it's really interesting to sort of like deconstruct like the power dynamics in our relationship as well as like what we've like both learned from working with each other so thank you for taking the time to invite me here to have this conversation um the best way for to ever have conversations is by force in front of a whole bunch of zoom attendees now i just the feeling is so mutual um you know i think i hope it's clear to everyone attending and i actually save us all time how much i've learned from working with one how grateful i am to like being community with her and like the many other folks we work with um and that i you know i hope like i think movement layering can feel kind of abstract and i think for me i guess like the takeaway i would just offer is that it felt so natural like that like obviously i'm gonna learn a ton and obviously if i'm working with sex workers and like their lives and livelihoods and community is on the line they're calling the shots and you know obviously i need to let go of some of my own ego around the stuff and like get over it right like and i think that you know in some ways like i as once said right movement layering is a framework i came to apply after the fact to the things that i was already doing because they were what felt right in the time and felt responsive to the needs of the folks that like to the needs of our relationship and the folks we work with and so you know as y'all go out into doing your work um whether it's movement layering or other kinds of movement work like i i wish you some of the same ease i guess of like finding folks who you click with and who you can like grow together but mason i know we need to mention our sponsors so i'll stop there thank you uh and again let me just echo thank you both of you for giving us so much to think about and to bring back to our work i want to also just say thank you to osna and umna for their amazing presentation yesterday i think between the two days we have stuff that we can take back and reflect on and hopefully really improve the way we all do our own tasks apologies to those questions that we didn't get to and thank you to all the attendees uh for coming and finally thank you to our sponsors to the berkman client center for internet and society for providing the infrastructure to have this talk and to the office of clinical and pro bono programs for helping us make sure that our panelists get paid and also to afl 19 and to afsana for making the pretty graphics and posting yes yes that was the afsana did a great job with the promotional materials as well um all right thank you everyone and we will see you next time