"I'll tell you what, we were tough faggots." -- Ed Mead

Ed Mead spent 18 years in prison after being a part of an armed revolutionary group in Washington state called the George Jackson Brigade, which was similar to the Weather Underground.  Author Daniel Burton-Rose wrote of him,

Ed Mead was arrested relatively early in the Brigade’s trajectory, so he spent much of his organizing time behind bars.  In his close to twenty-year sentence, Mead led work strikes, filed petitions, and generally did his best to fan the flames of discontent wherever he went.  This made him something of a scourge to prison administrators, who bounced him through state and federal penal systems, moving him along whenever his organizing efforts began to bear fruit.

One of his more notable efforts was Men Against Sexism (MAS), a group of "tough faggots" who forcibly stopped the buying and selling of prisoners by prisoners for the purpose of sexual exploitation [violent pimping of weaker prisoners by stronger ones] in Walla Walla.  During the group’s zenith in 1978, MAS proved so effective that a feminine male prisoner could wear a dress around without threat of violence.  MAS backed up their work with homemade grenades, single-shot rifles, and a willingness to die to stop prisoner-on-prisoner rape.  "Of all the political work that I’ve done," says Mead, Men Against Sexism is what I’m most proud of.  (The group effectively disbanded after a foiled escape attempt in 1978 involving Mead, several other prisoners and an array of homemade weapons.)

Yes, Mead and others actually had smuggled weapons into the prison, including a gun Mead was ready to use on at least one occasion.  According to Burton-Rose, the two men you see below holding hands debated killing members of a prison gang who defied their ban on "owning", selling, and raping other prisoners.  Only under threat of death did the gang release an effeminate gay prisoner over whom they had claimed "ownership".

Tough faggot, indeed.

Writing on the back reads, "MAS [Men Against Sexism] member Ed Mead + Danny Atteberry (misidentified as "lovers" in CM ["Concrete Mama", a nickname for the prison]) walk the tier of Big Red, the isolation unit at Walla Walla State Pen.  77 or 78 <probably."

Download a 300 dpi high-quality scan here.

Writing on the back reads, "Photo from the epic struggle of prisoners in Walla Walla's Intensive Security Unit, '78, in which Ed was involved.  The [George Jackson] Brigade attempted a bombing of the Capitol Complex in Olympia in support of the prisoner's strike."

Download a 300 dpi high-quality scan here.

These are scans are from copies found in a friend's musty old box of activist stuff from the 1970s and 1980s.  As far as I could tell from poking around on Google Images, this might be the first time these have been posted online.  I can't help but love the fuck out of these photos of queer resistance from inside prisons in the 1970s.  I have no idea what the original source of these photos is, but I will gladly credit them if someone tells me.

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For even more forgotten radical history from my area, one of the other members of the George Jackson Brigade, Janine Bertram, was a co-founder of the Seattle chapter of COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics), an early sex workers rights group.  Janine wanted the government out of sex workers' business completely, and was quoted as being opposed to compromises that "would have made the state the pimp."  The Seattle chapter of COYOTE later changed its name to the Washington Association of Prostitutes and created a job training program to teach women male-dominated skills, such as welding.

(I learned about this little piece of the ho revolution while trying to see if those prison photos has been published anywhere, skimming "Guerrilla USA: The George Jackson Brigade and the Anticapitalist Underground of the 1970s," which has now been placed on my book wish list.)

Anyone else feel like this is true?  I know it's not a hard and fast rule, but god damn, does it feel like it some days!

As people who know me are aware, I'm a serious night owl, often not going to sleep until after 6 in the morning.  Getting me to wake up early for anything short of the apocalypse is a big deal.  I woke up early today to take a morning cam appointment with a nice kinky guy I spent a lot of time with on cam last week.  I told him I don't normally do camming early in the day, that I don't like mornings, but he politely begged, so I decided to make an exception for a well-paying pervert who is into things I genuinely like.  What happened?  5 minutes before our scheduled appointment, he emailed to let me know he's busy but will try to be able to see me later some time.

I once had another kinky guy who was a great client when I could catch him (he even once flew me to his city for an in-person fetish session), but he was such a monumentally irritating flake and time-waster, I stopped even trying.  It wasn't worth all the following up with him to get the money.  (I spoke to another sex worker who'd had the exact same experience with him.  Maybe his real kink was getting us to chase him?)

I have many other examples of guys who popped in on cam, spent a bunch of money, bought me gifts, had truly fun shows with me, the promised me the world, and then disappeared.  If you don't want to see me again, I get it - variety is the spice of life - but don't make a an appointment in the morning after I told you I don't like doing that and then blow me off after I dragged myself out of bed for you.

Time-wasting on the part of clients is one of the top sex worker pet peeves.  If you're one of my readers who's a client/customer, please don't pull this shit on us.  If you wouldn't stand up your accountant, your lawyer, your doctor, your boss, or your wife, don't do it to sex workers.

Arg.  Getting only a few hours of sleep basically ruins my whole day, and I don't even have anything to show for it.  Maybe I'll go and see if I can fall asleep again, otherwise I won't make it past 8pm or so, when the real cam show clients start showing up.

For more sex worker infographics, see: Calico's stripping graph, Miss Maggie Mayhem's anti-porn flowchart, Kat's strippers-who-insist-they're-not-sex-workers flow chart, and my own anti-sex worker BINGO card.

 

I haven't had much time to write on the ho revolution lately, so I wanted to draw my readers' attention to Egypt again.  (See an earlier post on the intersections of how society treats both sex workers and Muslim women here.)

Focus on the country is waning, and I'm now only following one Egyptian tweeter/organizer myself: @Sandmonkey, who is now known to be 29-year-old Mahmoud Salem.  He posts tons of stuff - from coordinating protests as they happen, to thoughts on the economy, to how to talk to average people about politics - and it's been interesting to keep following the very-much-not-complete revolution going on in the country through his eyes.  Sure, Egyptians ousted president Hosni Mubarak, but now what?  With the country under temporary military rule, people are trying to sort out "which way forward?"

It might seem like overthrowing an Arab dictator, and American sex workers fighting criminalization and stigma, are about as different as two causes could be, but I've found a lot of commonality reading Sandmonkey's tweets.  (Pardon me if I sound like a fangirl.  Full disclosure: this chick will always melt for smart political dudes.)  I wish I'd saved or re-tweeted more of my favorites so I could find them now, but here's a sampling of things I've liked, which cover the three big points that I want to highlight:

Public outreach

One of the overall themes I've found both with Sandmonkey's tweets, and other things I've read about Egypt's revolution, is the importance of young people reaching out and talking to older generations and people who disagree with you.  Sandmonkey is regularly urging his followers to talk to their families, their neighbors, anyone they encounter, and debunk myths and explain what the January 25th revolution is really about.  Sex workers badly need to do this sort of thing, and better facilitating public outreach is my goal with my upcoming not-for-profit project, SWAAY.  You can't change the world without being bold enough to start talking to lots and lots of normal people and explaining why they ought to get on board with your ideas.

Mutual aid

Another issue, not at all new to sex workers, is of the importance of taking care of your own communities when the state and police fail to help you.  Even though the specifics are different, the point is very much the same: we must look out for each other.  In the last 6 weeks, I've seen Egyptians on Twitter posting about things like neighborhood watch patrols to protect themselves from government thugs, warning systems at the Tahrir Square camp to alert other protesters if police were coming, the construction of physical barriers for protection, medical volunteers treating injuries, supporters making food and bringing it to those on the streets, women leading protests during the day after men protected them during the night, and later, people popping up to sweep and repair damage to their city after the massive protests.  (Sandmonkey was arrested and beaten while delivering medical supplies to a makeshift clinic for protesters.)  We will take care of ourselves because no one else is going to do it for us is the kind of vital empowerment from within that all types of outliers require.

There's room for everyone

Not everyone is going to be at the front lines.  Not everyone can be a full-timer.  We all have things of value to contribute, and if we can all spare just a bit of our energy, we can make a big impact.  I don't think I'd be good at trying to reach out to the police in an effort to get them to be less violent, rape-y, and discriminatory against street-based sex workers.  I don't think I'd be good at policy and lobbying stuff, I don't want to be on TV as a spokesperson, and I lack the skills to help people with medical issues.  Thankfully, other people are good at those things.  I think I'm pretty good at explaining complex issues in accessible terms, debating anti- sex worker myths, and I know how to operate clean, easy-to-navigate web sites.  Diversity of skills and interests is an asset, not a weakness.