Volunteers wound their way through the neighborhoods around Aurora Avenue on Saturday ahead of a City Council vote this week on whether to revive Seattle’s prostitution laws and establish a Soap (Stay Out of Area Prostitution) zone along seven miles of Aurora.

I followed one of the teams and found out that few neighbors were aware of the legislation and would like to know more, but several of them had urgent matters that they needed to attend to at that very moment! So many busy bees live at Aurora!

But seriously, the canvassers managed to persuade more than a few neighbors to hear them. Over the course of about two hours, the group of 11 volunteers split into five teams, left leaflets at about 140 doors and talked to about 50 neighbors. The Door Knockers, who oppose the bill, told residents the proposal could make it easier for sex traffickers to exploit their victims and lead to police arrests other than traffickers and men. They also stressed that if the City Council’s Public Safety Committee approves the bill Tuesday, the full council could vote on the bill as soon as Sept. 17, giving opponents very little time to educate the public about the dangers they see in the bill. Given the response we heard at the doors, many seemed to see the bill as unhelpful and potentially harmful, which stood in stark contrast to the neighbors who turned out support the bill at the last public hearing.

Madison Zack-Wu, campaign head of the dancer-led advocacy group Strippers Are Workers (SAW), organized the canvas and split with a team of two other volunteers; an Aurora resident who goes by Peach and Aaron Banh, a recent UW graduate. The first person the team spoke to at the doors said she had heard about the legislation and gave a “so-so” hand gesture when asked how she felt about it. That gesture pretty much summed up the reactions of the 12 neighbors Zack-Wu’s group spoke to over the two hours. One person strongly supported the bill, but otherwise neighbors seemed unaware of the legislation or opposed to targeting sex workers for arrest.

The bill, championed by Councilwoman Cathy Moore, would make “prostitution running” a misdemeanor punishable by up to 90 days in jail and a $1,000 fine. Under the law, officers could arrest people for waving at passersby, walking up and talking to someone in a car, or any behavior that makes someone appear to be a sex worker.

The bill also creates a felony charge of “promoting prostitution,” which carries a penalty of up to one year in jail and a $5,000 fine. This provision is aimed at people who, for example, leave others for a pass on Aurora or who otherwise support a person’s sex work. Moore is selling this part of the bill as a way to target pimps and sex workers, but advocate fear that other sex workers and people who support sex workers may be arrested under the law.

Finally, Moore’s bill creates the seven-mile SOAP zone along Aurora Avenue, which would allow judges to order people to stay out of the area as part of pretrial or sentencing conditions for anyone arrested for or convicted of any prostitution-related crime. Moore amended his original bill to prevent judges from issuing exclusion orders against people arrested only for prostitution.

Speaking with neighbors, the workers disputed Moore’s claim that the bill would help address neighborhood gun violence, arguing that Moore’s bill fails to address the root causes of gun violence, such as poverty, income inequality, lack of supportive housing and community . support system, according to analysis by the Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility (AGR). Other problems with the bill include how it conflates sex work and sex trafficking, leading lawmakers to create “misguided” interventions that harm sex workers but not traffickers. For example, sex traffickers use fear of criminalization against their victims. When sex workers are arrested by police, they are less likely to turn to law enforcement for help, especially if they have already had bad experiences with police.

The group’s pamphlets contained a “non-exhaustive list” of all organizations which opposite bill, including the Harborview Abuse & Trauma Center, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Washington, the Organization for Prostitution Services, the Domestic Abuse Women’s Network, the Coalition Ending Gender-Based Violence, and the King County Department of Public Defense, to name a few. This broad opposition from civil rights groups makes sense, given that Seattle repealed the law in 2020 after the city proved it disproportionately affected people of color, transgender people and women. The city too found that the subjective nature of the law resulted in officers arresting people who were not involved in sex work.

At one point during the filming, Zack-Wu and her group spoke with a shirtless man who was working to install a security camera outside his home. He raised his concerns about the subjective nature of the law, saying officers would make arrests based on their impressions rather than evidence of a crime. The man’s wife pulled up to the house in the middle of the conversation with the volunteers, and the man joked with her that the workers had come to talk to him because his shirtless body could make him a target for police under the proposed law. Another neighbor raised a similar concern more seriously, one of the volunteers said. That neighbor said that, as a woman of color who lives in the area, she worried that police would approach and question her as she traveled to and from her bus stop.

When neighbors asked what they would do if they opposed the bill, or what the group proposed as alternatives, volunteers said they wanted more transparency into how the Seattle Police Department (SPD) investigates shootings in the Aurora neighborhood and more evidence from SPD to prove that police officers already do. everything they can to curb shootings with current laws. The group also wants the council to increase funding for organizations already does direct harm reduction and housing outreach for people in the sex trade, as well as community-based early intervention for gun violence prevention. Finally, the volunteers suggested that the city could improve the safety of the neighborhood by placing Ecoblock at the entrances to neighborhood streets, which helped reduce the number of shootings on 101st Street west of Aurora Ave North. One neighbor seemed interested in testifying against the bill, but they later backed out. Otherwise, a handful of neighbors said they would review the information and consider sending an email.

Zack-Wu said her group came up with these suggestions after talking to Aurora residents and neighborhood organizations that want to reduce gun violence along the avenue but oppose the idea of ​​arresting sex workers, especially without funding for sex worker-specific services and diversion programs. So far, however, Moore has not added resident input to her recently proposed changes to the bill, and she has attached zero additional funding for services; her amendment has only strengthened the boundaries of the SOAP zone and excluded arrested sex workers from being subject to SOAP zone orders.

Moore’s amendment sought to address concerns about past issues involving SPD officers violence against sex workers and demand services from them. In her amendment, she included a section that would require SPD to train all officers patrolling the SOAP zone on best practices for working with survivors of commercial sexual exploitation. Moore said the training would be handled by the Seattle Adult Survivors Collaborative (ASC) Task Force, which would include The More We Love and The Silent Task Force. But when The stranger asked about how Moore selected these organizations to train SPD and whether the city had gone through a competitive bidding process for those services, a spokesperson for her office said she planned to file a revised amendment soon that would remove the section on the training and credentials to ASC.

People interested in submitting public comments on the Law on Prostitution and the SOAP Zone can find more information on the City Council’s agenda and at the City Recorder website. The meeting starts at 9.30. Tuesday, and registration for virtual public comment opens at 8:30 a.m. For those who want to comment in person, Councilman Bob Kettle suggested people come to City Hall between 8:30 and 9:00 a.m.