Tara smiles at March in Mexico City!

Sex workers from across all continents, including most countries in Latin America, have come together in Mexico City prior to the International AIDS Conference to build community, increase sex worker visibility, and unify to demand recognition of sex worker rights as an integral part of HIV/AIDS work. Following on the great sex worker organizing that happened in Toronto at the last International AIDS Conference (IAC), activists are hoping that by coming together before the actual IAC sex workers will be better positioned to advance their messages and visibility, especially at a crucial time when new attacks on sex worker rights are happening in name of saving sex workers.

(Please follow this link to the AIDS2008 Blog where Darby posts!) 

Their press release..

ON THE ISSUES: The Progressive Woman’s Magazine

Works Hard For Her Money: Feminists and Prostitutes

http://www.ontheissuesmagazine.com/july08/index.php

A print publication from 1983-1999, ON THE ISSUES MAGAZINE ONLINE offers full archives and all content for free as a committed public service to upgrade the level of feminist conversation. Visitwww.ontheissuesmagazine.com

“NEW YORK: Prostitution penetrated the news in a major way in recent months — from ex-governor Eliot Spitzer of New York and his paid binges with women to the suicide of DC madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey and the Showtime fluff of “Secret Diary of A Call Girl”

But the media, politicians and feminists have not grappled with the real complexities of prostitutioni. In its new Online edition, “Works Hard for Her Money: Feminists and Prostitutes” ON THE ISSUESMAGAZINE releases compelling original content — diverse articles, art and poetry that challenge current notions and urge new thinking.

The Prostitution law review committee of the Ministry of Justice in NZ has recently released their 5 year review of the decriminalization of prostitutioni (.PDF HERE). They have some interesting findings, after what is now 5 years of legal prostitutioni:
Some quotes from the Associate Justice Minister Lianne Dalziel:

“The report indicates that the numbers have remained more or less the same since the Act came into force and that most sex workers are better off under the PRA than they were previously, which was the intention of the Act.

May 19, 2008

Michael O. Leavitt

Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Office of Global Health Affairs

Room 639H

200 Independence Avenue, SW

Washington, DC 20201

Subject: Comments on Office of Global Health Affairs; Regulation on the Organizational Integrity of Entities Implementing Leadership Act Programs and Activities, Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, 73 Fed. Reg. 20,900, April 17, 2008

Dear Secretary Leavitt,